London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

You can easily crick your neck with all the looking back in ballet. Take the English National Ballet's production of Giselle. It was commissioned in 1971 by the very venerable Dame Beryl Grey, ENB's then director, from the nearly-as-venerable Mary Skeaping, a former ballerina who danced with Anna Pavlova, probably the most venerable ballerina of all time. Skeaping was also cheek-to-cheek with Tamara Karsavina and Olga Spessivtseva, the two most important Giselles of the early 20th century.

How often did I wish, when I was 10, that the pictures in Alice in Wonderland would come to life and dance before my eyes? How I wanted the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, and inquisitive little Alice to step off the page and bring their anarchic, mysterious, laugh-aloud world with them.

The Canterville Ghost is one of Oscar Wilde's lesser known tales. It's the story of a haughty, aristocratic ghost who gets his kicks from ghoulish tricks and is distracted from playing kickthecan for all eternity only when love interest Virginia (Elena Glurdjidze) and her family move in to his house.

You have to be on your guard with a ballet like The Nutcracker. Its Christmas story of family good cheer is so appealing, and Tchaikovsky's melodies are so gorgeous, that even less than perfect productions soon wrap you in sweetness and gossamer-soft hope. How could things not work out when we have ballets like The Nutcracker?